Bloom Community School

Bloom Community School is a small micro-school for preschool through eighth grade. We're project-based, so each semester we choose a new project and fold all of our curriculum into a central theme. From national parks, where we teach geography, history, and science biomes, to the story of denim, which extends into weaving arts and immigration, it's a great way to offer varied lessons that are engaging, cohesive, and relevant.

We also take a mixed-grade approach to learning. It takes flexibility and the right resources to make a classroom with different age groups work, which is one of the reasons Touch-type Read and Spell (TTRS) fits so well into our school.

We came to TTRS through one of our teachers, who had used the program while homeschooling her children. As a small school, the scholarship has meant we can give every student access to a tool we would otherwise struggle to afford. The children use it as a self-study practice activity for 10–15 minutes, four days a week, completing one or two modules a session — seeing the word, hearing it, then typing it.

We encourage handwriting first but view typing as a helpful secondary approach, so students avoid the frustration of not being able to get their thoughts down fast enough. It's also useful when children are doing research online.

We don't do grades at our school, so we talk through what the accuracy numbers at the end of a module mean and encourage students to keep their eyes on the screen — the more they avoid looking at the keyboard, the stronger their typing becomes.

We've noticed TTRS is particularly beneficial for students who struggle with spelling, reading, and writing-based learning differences. For learners with dyspraxia and dysgraphia, it takes more time for their hands to adjust, but that's fine — TTRS lets them start at different levels, repeat modules, and move ahead at their own pace. One fifth-grade student we suspect has dyslexia took to the program right away and fully excelled — by the end of the term, he was faster at typing than his teacher!